🔒From the Editor: Picking the cover for the 40 Under Forty

Every year for the 40 Under Forty awards, I issue the same challenge to the winners: Take the best photo.

Since 2016, WBJ has divided the 40 winners into smaller groups and taken them to high-profile and fun locations around Central Massachusetts to create high-energy and zany photos in order to set a tone of youthful exuberance for the entire publication. After we put one of these photos on the front page of the 40 Under Forty edition in 2017, I’ve told all these small groups they are in a competition to land on the cover of what has traditionally been WBJ’s most-read edition of the year. And, oh boy, these Type A personalities go all out: coordinating outfits, bringing props, buying party supplies, hiring professional makeup artists, scouting locations in advance, and cajoling photographers to help them win.

The hardest part is picking the winner, especially since I attend nearly all the shoots and see the extreme effort the 40 Under Forty put into these photos, often outside in the July and August heat and humidity. The photos now are so good that Art Director Mitchell Hayes will mock up at least 10 different cover options. It’s like trying to pick your favorite child, and each year I bemoan all the alternatives we left on the cutting room floor.

In another very close competition, the group who shot their photos at Fivefork Farms in Upton won this year. Yolanda Ramos hand-painted a dozen signs to use as props. Jennifer Ngo’s marketing team created a special apron for her. Jeff Bercume did his best Tom Cruise impersonation. Ellin Terrill-Kocibelli wore a black dress, black jacket, black gloves, and sunglasses, looking like the coolest version of an assassin crossed with a farmer. They convinced the farm’s owners to push back the start of the shoot, to capture the perfect sunset lighting. They spent nearly 30 minutes dangling off the front bucket of a tractor, all in the hopes of getting the best shot. The win is well deserved.

Of course, the nine other groups all took amazing photos, too, and it pains me they all can’t somehow be on the cover. Regardless, we took hundreds of fantastic photos, which you can see starting here. While the photos may draw you in, my hope is you’ll stick around to read every word of the winners’ profiles and realize how lucky we are to have these 40 people in our business community.

Brad Kane is editor of the Worcester Business Journal.